


now + forever

by quietkids



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:29:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27607655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietkids/pseuds/quietkids
Summary: I love everything because I love you.
Relationships: Kita Shinsuke/Miya Atsumu
Comments: 24
Kudos: 96





	now + forever

**Author's Note:**

> hi [this](https://open.spotify.com/album/29U9LtzSF0ftWiLNNw1CP6?autoplay=true) is the song they dance to

_I love everything because I love you._  
— Mistki, “Strawberry Blond” 

  
  
  
  
  
  
Their bathroom is blue-tiled, the porcelain tub cracked.

Shinsuke wrinkled his nose the first time he had seen it. Atsumu had laughed and said, “C’mon Shin, it’s quaint.” 

“Quaint,” Kita had said, still standing in the doorway, arms crossed. “Funny.”

Atsumu had been leaning on the wall opposite him, a grin half-written on his face. The afternoon sunlight pouring in through the window, Kita’s hair glowing silver. “Here, let’s go look at the kitchen.” He takes Shinsuke’s hand and runs his thumb over his knuckles. “Maybe it’ll have granite countertops and everything will be solved.”

“You know everything about me.” 

“Right,” Atsumu says. 

The kitchen does not have granite countertops. They buy the place anyway. Something about “personality.” Or the fluffy calico cat that everyone in the neighborhood seems to know. It’s close enough to the farm so that Shinsuke can come home whenever it’s not the peak of harvest season, and Atsumu can come home on the weekends by train as long it’s not a weekend right before a tournament. It works for them. 

And there’s a cat.  
  


*** * ***

  
  
Atsumu gets a week off before the season begins to pick up; Kita’s home because it’s late October and harvest season has just ended. They’re both exhausted, their bodies, whole and leaden, sinking into the couch cushions, Atsumu’s head in Kita’s lap, Kita’s hand absentmindedly running through Atsumu’s hair. The radio’s playing, an odd mix of old American pop songs and bossa nova and Japanese songs that people only sing during karaoke. Hikaru Utada’s First Love comes on at some point, and Atsumu sits up, Shinsuke’s hand falling down on the sofa.

Atsumu looks at Shinsuke.

“I like this song.”

Kita smiles.

Atsumu continues. “We should dance to it.” 

“You’re joking.”

“Come on, she’s almost through the first verse already.” He grabs Shinsuke’s hand and Shinsuke lets himself be taken, and then their two bodies are pressed together in the center of their living room, the windows outside glowing gently, the other people with their other lives melting into the indigo sky. 

Kita laughs. 

“It’s sad no one knows you’re the cheesy one.” 

“Osamu’d never let it die. I’d never leave the house again.” 

Shinsuke hums. “That’s pretty sad of you.” 

Atsumu smiles crookedly, Shinsuke staring at him, the scar under his chin and his one cheek dimple, _I could stare at you forever, I could stay here forever._ They stand there, just swaying because neither of them knows how to dance even though Atsumu should have learned at least a little bit by now because of all the time he’s spent overseas clubbing with Hinata, _you are always gonna be my love floating over them sweetly._ The first chorus passes. 

“It’s hard sometimes, isn’t it.” 

The living room light glows yellow ochre, burnt umber, raw sienna spilling over their skin. 

“Yeah,” Shinsuke mumbles, his eyes heavy-lidded, his cheek pressed to the warmth of Atsumu’s chest. “Yeah, it is.” They’re still dancing, albeit slowly, probably off-beat, but neither of them seems to be paying attention to the music anymore. 

Atsumu’s hand combing through Shinsuke’s hair, the other one wrapped firmly around his waist. He presses a kiss to his temple.

_We’ll be okay._

“Let me spin you,” Kita says suddenly, and Atsumu laughs, and for a gentle moment, everything is warm.

_You will always be inside my heart._  
  


*** * ***

  
  
The day Atsumu finds out he makes it on the national team, he’s in Tokyo with Kageyama, in some upscale cafe with neon lights, the kind that only sells overpriced castella cakes, and plays Ichiko Aoba. Kageyama gets the phone call first, and then Atsumu, and then Atsumu runs outside, a hurried apology to Kageyama, who nods and then takes Atsumu’s barely-touched cake.

“I made it. Shin, I made it.” 

“I knew you would.”

A pause. Tokyo stretched before him, a cloudy day, the buildings large and endless, people with briefcases and schoolgirls rushing past him.

“I’m so proud of you.”

“I love you.” _I love you, I love you, I love you,_ a steady rhythm under Atsumu’s tongue.

Kita laughs, and Atsumu can see him, swathed in golden-honey light, his forearms tanned and corded, his phone between his cheek and shoulder. 

“I love you, too, Atsumu.”  
  


*** * ***

  
  
Atsumu buys lavender for the bathroom.

Shinsuke asks him when he’d graduated from Axe. 

Atsumu says he doesn’t know what Shin’s talking about.

They dry the lavender and hang a bunch on the window, the purple tapping gently against the window on windier days, their skin beginning to take on the smell, sweet pine and floral.  
  


*** * ***

  
  
  
  
“I bought us a souvenir magnet,” Atsumu says one morning at the dinner table, Kita sitting across from him, flipping through some old philosophy book that only he would read, their legs tangled together underneath, the window cracked open, the smell from last night's rain filling the room.

“From...Tokyo? Tokyo, Japan?”

“Yeah, gimme a sec.” Atsumu almost sprints out of the room, and then comes back with the ugliest thing Kita’s ever seen in his life. It’s porcelain, but also somehow holographic, the Skytree looks like something else entirely—

Atsumu puts it on the refrigerator and then turns back to look at Kita, who’s still looking at him the same way he looked at him during Atsumu’s first year of high school and the day after his graduation and the day of the Adlers game, some odd mix of _I want to know you forever_ and _you’ll always surprise me_ and _when I see you I want to say things I don’t know how to say,_ and Atsumu smiles crookedly, thoroughly self-satisfied, and Kita blinks and the moment’s gone.  
  


*** * ***

  
Kita’s chin balances on Atsumu’s shoulder, his arms wrapped around Atsumu as he scrapes garlic and ginger into the pan.

“You should learn how to actually cook one of these days,” Atsumu says, but there’s no real venom behind it (there’s no real venom behind anything he says nowadays, anyway), and Kita laughs softly.

“There’s no point if you’re here.”

Atsumu takes a pair of chopsticks and stirs the garlic around in the glistening oil.

“Fair.”  
  


*** * ***

  
  
At some point, Kita starts to enjoy the crack in the porcelain tub, the uneven tiling on the bottom row, the fading lettering on the faucets, _there’s something scruffy about it,_ he says to Atsumu one morning, who, half-asleep, had said _and you’ve liked scruffy things since when?_ and then pulled him back into bed.

Atsumu had fallen back asleep, and Kita had laid there staring, tucking Atsumu’s hair behind his ear, the gentle morning heat spreading across their shoulder blades. It was late summer, maybe even early fall (it’s hard to recall particulars, now), and Kita had planted a kiss to Atsumu’s temple, his skin soft and smelling like lavender, and Kita had thought _love is simple,_ and then they both stayed there for a long time.

  
  
  
  
  
  


_“I fell in love. I believed people. And even now I love the yellow light shining down on the dirty brick wall.”_

—mati diop from “atlantique”

__  


**Author's Note:**

> think of this as their epilogue yk 
> 
> <3


End file.
